Bold Men, Far Horizons: Pioneer Pilots and Their Flights.
first edition
1966 · Philadelphia
by Mason, Herbert Mollow, Jr.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, (1966). First Edition, stated. Octavo, black cloth-backed green boards (hardcover), silver letters and decorations to spine and upper cover, 197 pp. Near-Fine, with bookplate; in a Near-Fine, mylar protected dust jacket. From dust jacket: In the history of manned flight, a place of special glory belongs to the daring pilots of that golden era of aviation -- the 1920s and the 1930s. Facing almost insuperable dangers and laughing in the teeth of the elements, about which they knew little or nothing, they flew wobbly old crates which seem incredible today, and in them spanned oceans and continents to win the “firsts” in aviation history. Here are the stories of Kelly and Macready, American Air Service pilots who made the first nonstop flight across America after two heart-breaking failures; Sir Alan J. Cobham, who flew from Cairo to Capetown across wild, hostile territory that seemed to eat up airplanes; the three Russian airmen who flew 62 hours nonstop in a monoplane from Moscow to California, via the polar route, in 1937; the immortal Wiley Post, whose last great adventure with Will Rogers ended in an icy Alaskan tragedy; and James Mattern, who had to walk out of Siberia after crashing in that wasteland. Here, too, is the epic of the ifrst flight around the world, of the first east-west crossing of the killer Atlantic, and of the achievements of little-known long-distance men whose records have gone largely unnoticed in this country, told by a man who almost literally grew up in a cockpit. (Inventory #: 60987bd)